


given to eat of the lotus

by Damkianna



Category: Veritas: The Quest
Genre: Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Mutual Pining, Visions, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 16:51:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8900161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: "So, utopia, huh?" Cal said, grimacing. His fingers were really starting to ache."A vision of transcendent heaven," Juliet corrected above him.(Or: Nikko gets himself into an unusual kind of trouble; Cal follows him into it, because of course he does, and learns a few things about what each of them really wants.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [carolinecrane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinecrane/gifts).



> ♥.

 

 

"So, utopia, huh?" Cal said, grimacing. His fingers were really starting to ache.

"A vision of transcendent heaven," Juliet corrected above him, and then she inched a little further along the ledge and sent a shower of gravel bouncing off Cal's knuckles. "And then something else about a journey, but that part wasn't very clear—oh!"

"Got something?" Solomon called, from where he was dangling below them.

And then, from even further down, Nikko, flat and sardonic: "Please say yes."

"Just a little—bit—further," Juliet said, and Cal made a quick assessment, shifted his grip a little, and then let go with one hand so he could reach out and tap Juliet's ankle.

"There's a foothold that'll give you a couple more inches," he said. "Up, and to the right—here—"

She kept one foot on the ledge but obediently lifted the other; she couldn't move far enough away from the rock face to see the foothold for herself, so Cal kept two fingers on her heel to guide her foot along until the toe of her boot found the edge of it.

"Thanks," she said, testing it.

If Cal had known this job involved this much dangling from weird subterranean cliffs—well, all right, he probably would still have said yes to Solomon. But he wouldn't have done it as eagerly.

The foothold was solid, apparently: Juliet sucked in a breath and then went for it, her other foot coming off the ledge entirely. She scrabbled for a second but then caught whatever handhold she'd spotted—and pulled herself up, completely out of Cal's reach.

"Wh—"

"There's an opening up here," and Juliet's voice had gotten weird and a little echoey. "And for the record? I'm pretty sure we're in the right place."

 

 

She helped Cal pull himself up, and then wandered off to take readings or something while Cal did the same for Solomon—and he didn't even mind, because Solomon's expression when his head came up over the cliff face was worth it.

"Opening" had been an understatement. After crawling through and up and over what had felt like about ten miles of the same rough bland sandstone everywhere, they'd reached a vast flat space, with a curving rear wall and a roof overhanging it. There was nothing obviously unnatural about it, stalactites and flowstone just like you might expect; but the way the deposits had formed up, they'd created precisely seven columns, all about the same circumference—and the same distance apart. Cal had thought, glancing up, that he'd been seeing the light from Juliet's headlamp bouncing off something, but it had actually been a load of weird luminescent rock. Which, again, didn't exactly look artificial; it didn't seem to have been shaped or anything. It was just ... really evenly distributed, casting a perfect bluish light just bright enough to make headlamps unnecessary.

There weren't any obvious signs of the artifact they'd come looking for, but that was hardly a surprise. The only thing that really needed figuring out was what was left between it and them. Secret room hidden in the floor or ceiling? Spike traps? A frustratingly complicated riddle? Or maybe ninjas. Artifact-security roulette hadn't come up ninjas in a while, Cal thought.

"Amazing," Solomon breathed, and then held up a hand, and Cal clasped his arm and pulled him the rest of the way up.

Juliet had the camera—a new one they were testing, and so far it didn't seem like Maggie had lost the signal up top. Cal could hear her in his earpiece, walking Juliet through using the scanner to check the place out. Solomon was up and already taking a look around, muttering something to himself about the cavern's age, because—

Because Nikko, who'd been next up behind him, had already pulled himself up over the ledge without Solomon's help.

Cal felt stupid and conspicuous yanking his eyes away—but he'd have felt even stupider and more conspicuous leaving them where they were. Nikko had caught him staring, or nearly had, almost a dozen times over the past couple days. Better to play it safe at the moment, if he could.

He hadn't been having nearly as much trouble with that particular habit before Château Rene. But Nikko had been kind of weird since then—quiet, keeping his head down, not making a nuisance of himself or getting in Cal's face. And Cal had discovered, to his own surprise and not a little discomfort, that he hated it.

He'd been pretty careful. He hadn't mother-henned at Nikko or anything. That was Solomon's job, and—and it wasn't like Nikko wanted Cal looking out for him anyway. It had just been sort of disconcerting to discover that whatever they were doing, being—friends or something, meant Cal was going to _worry_ about the kid all the time.

He'd admitted to himself a while ago that Nikko was smart, occasionally; and right about stuff, a very small amount of the time; and—and nice to look at—

Nice to look at maybe a little too often. It didn't make sense for "Nikko all cleaned up and pretending to be Solomon's model son at some banquet" and "Nikko kind of sweaty from playing basketball against Vincent with his hair all sticking up" to both draw Cal's eye like they did; but they did.

As if that hadn't been bad enough, these days Cal wasn't looking at Nikko and thinking about what a smug jerk he was. He was looking at Nikko and thinking about whether Nikko was all right—whether he needed to talk or something—whether he might open up to Juliet, if Cal went and got her, because the odds he'd tell Cal anything were depressingly low—

And that was a whole different kind of problem.

"Okay!" Solomon said, clapping his hands together. Cal startled and then tried to pretend he hadn't, just in case Vincent was looking. He'd already taken Cal aside not two days ago to ask whether there was anything on Cal's mind that might be distracting him. If he did it again, Cal couldn't swear that _oh, I—just Nikko_ wouldn't be the first thing to fall out of his mouth.

And Vincent would absolutely know what that meant.

"Let's take a look around, see if there are any other passages or rooms—and if you find anything that might be writing, get it on the camera so Maggie can start analyzing it. All right?"

"You got it," Cal muttered, and turned around to face one of the columns so he couldn't accidentally start staring at Nikko again.

 

 

There wasn't any writing on that particular column, or if there was then Cal couldn't see it. He veered back and forth between telling himself it was just a cave formation and being sure it couldn't be a coincidence: seven of them, seven, that had been an important number in a lot of places for a really long time. And the way they looked, matching so well, and set apart just far enough, like they'd been arranged.

It occurred to him after a minute that even though the flowstone didn't look like it had been worked or carved, that didn't mean there wasn't something underneath it that had been. Maybe whatever it was had been here long enough for the stalactites and deposits to form over top of it—wouldn't be the most unusual thing they'd ever seen, after all.

He prodded at the column a little. Depending on the rate of accumulation, it was possible. It would still have taken a few thousand years, sure. But he couldn't really rule that kind of timeline out, after what they'd all seen in Antarctica.

Cal peered at the column and felt through the gear he had at his waist until he found the knife. This particular brand of sandstone didn't seem to be all that hard; he could chip at it without dulling the blade much.

He dug into it a little further, and then all at once couldn't get anywhere. It was like trying to drill through a block of wood and hitting a knot—suddenly he just wasn't making any progress.

He pulled the knife back out and squinted into the hole he'd made in the side of the column. Was that—light? More of the luminescent rock, maybe, or—

"Got something?"

That was Solomon, Cal thought, not Nikko, so it was safe to turn around—and then he did and it turned out Nikko was right at Solomon's shoulder. Cal accidentally met his eyes for one second, two, and then cleared his throat and looked away and said, "Maybe."

"Hmm," was all he got out of Solomon for a minute. And then, still looking at the column, Solomon held out a hand. "May I?"

Cal handed over the knife, and Solomon took it and turned it the other way around: so the hilt was pointing out toward his fingertips, not the blade. He lined his hand up and then drove the hilt sharply into the stone around the hole, once and again and then a third time, and the third time there was a sharp cracking noise and a chunk of stone fell away like eggshell.

Definitely light underneath. And not just paleness, actual _light_ —not the blue luminescent rocks, either, but a steady pale glow like a photocopier or an artist's light table.

"Yeah, I'd say that's something, all right," Solomon said, flashing a quick grin at Cal; and then he moved his hand and struck again.

An even larger piece came loose, and that was when it happened.

This one didn't fall, and Nikko reached for it, to pull it out of the way. He wasn't any closer than Solomon or anything, so it must have been that he touched it—it couldn't have been more than a brush of his fingers. But when he moved his hand away, Cal could see that the backs of his fingertips were trailing light, the nails and a little from one knuckle. Like glow-in-the-dark paint, or like somehow a little bit of the column's glowing surface had rubbed off.

A second later, the light caught Nikko's eye, too. "Huh," he said, dropping the bit of rock and turning his hand over to examine it; and then suddenly it wasn't just the backs of his fingers anymore.

"Okay, that's weird," Nikko said, brushing uselessly at his arm, his elbow: the light was climbing up from his hand in snaking lines like veins, seeping relentlessly higher. "Dad—Dad—"

"Take a breath, Nikko," Solomon said, and he managed to sound pretty calm even though Cal could see how tense his jaw had gotten. "Does it hurt?"

"No," Nikko said. "I mean—it kind of fizzes? But, uh—"

It was still going. Up and under the arm of his t-shirt, and Cal had a second to hope it would somehow stop there before it showed up at Nikko's collar, crawling up his throat with something that could almost be called grace. His whole arm was shining with it, the glow forking across his skin like tattooed lightning.

"Okay, just hang on," Solomon was saying, but it was obviously just to keep Nikko from freaking out—what the hell was Solomon going to do about this? What were any of them going to do about it? Even if Maggie were here—

"Uh, Dad?" Nikko said, voice pinched, as the light snuck up across his cheek—and it was bright enough to make him squint, trying not to look at it, and then Cal had to squint too because something flashed.

Even once the flash had faded, Cal's vision was popping with afterimages; he closed his eyes and opened them, once and then again, blinking it all away. And then he saw.

Nikko was still there. Still standing, and still breathing. The light-vines were still there, too, wrapping up and around his arm, his chin, but they'd calmed down a little or something. They hadn't stopped glowing, but they were doing it about half as brightly.

And that was because all the glow they'd lost and then some was crammed into Nikko's eyes. Cal couldn't see—couldn't see anything, not pupil or iris or anything; Nikko's eyes were just light, shining white and a little blue, flat and endless.

"Nikko," Solomon said. "Nikko? Nikko—" and that tone was more than enough to catch Juliet's attention, Vincent's. "Nikko, can you hear me?"

Cal got a grip and went for Nikko's arm—

"Careful," Solomon snapped, but Cal's hand had already come down on Nikko's skin, and nothing happened. The light didn't jump to him, or whatever Solomon had been worried about; and he felt around for a second, heart in his throat, but there was a pulse in Nikko's wrist after all. Almost too steady, Cal thought, considering Nikko had been on the edge of freaking out just a few seconds ago. But it was there.

"What did he do?" Juliet said, up and scrambling over a blob of flowstone with the camera in hand. "Maggie, are you getting this?"

"I'm receiving," Maggie said in all their ears. "What happened?"

As if any of them had any idea. "I'm not sure," Solomon said, "I—he reached out—"

"He touched the column," Cal said. "Underneath, the light part. I hadn't gotten far enough to, and Solomon was just touching the rock, but Nikko—he touched it, he—his bare hand."

"But he's still breathing," Maggie said.

"Still breathing," Vincent confirmed, and glanced at Cal; and Cal gave him a little nod. "And he has a pulse. He's standing on his own, and doesn't appear to be injured. But he's unresponsive."

"And he—his eyes," Juliet added, for Maggie's benefit, and lifted the camera up and around so Maggie could see them, the blank white light spilling out of them.

"And there wasn't anything on the cartouche about this?" Solomon said.

Trying to get the facts in order—as if that would do anything. "Yeah," Cal said sharply, "it had this whole underlined section about going blind and losing your mind, Juliet just didn't mention it—"

Vincent's gaze went sharp and he raised an eyebrow, and Cal caught himself and shut up. Jesus, it wasn't Solomon's fault. Nikko was the one who hadn't been careful—he should have had gloves on, they all should have had gloves on—

Luckily, Solomon's attention was all on Juliet. "Anything," he repeated.

"I—not about this," Juliet said. "A vision of transcendent heaven, that's the best I could do, and something about a journey, about being shown the way. It wasn't clear, it could have been a metaphor—"

A metaphor. Jesus. Cal looked at Nikko again, and almost wanted to slap him: for all that the rest of them were panicking around him, Nikko looked fine, except for his eyes. His face looked calm, relaxed—placid. Placid and unseeing—

A vision, Cal thought. A vision.

 

 

Touching Nikko's arm hadn't done anything. Cal tried the column next, but it didn't do anything to his hand, didn't leave him with white light creeping up his arm.

"Hey, Cal—Cal, what are you—"

Cal ignored the words and went for the knife, tugging it out of Solomon's unresisting hand before Solomon could do more than blink at him. Maybe the columns were like—like a connection, like dialup, and Nikko was on that column's line: it was busy. Which meant Cal needed a line of his own—

"Cal. Cal, stop."

"It's worth a try," Cal said, shaking off Juliet's hand, and kept hacking at the next column over, chipping away blobby little chunks of rock until that same stupid light spilled out at him from underneath.

"Cal," Vincent said, and that tone meant he was ten seconds away from actually picking Cal up bodily, which would make this harder.

"Look, Nikko seems okay, right?" Cal said. "Aside from the glowing. He's not hurt, he doesn't seem to be in pain. If this doesn't help, then I'll just be in the same position he is—whatever else you guys come up with will fix us both. You need Juliet because she's the one who figured out how to read the cartouche, and if there are any more instructions around here, she can probably read those too. And if you have to move us, or lower us out of here—" He gave Vincent a look. "I'm thinking you want you at the ropes instead of me."

Vincent met the look and then glanced at Solomon, and yeah, even he couldn't figure out how to argue that Cal was the better choice for lifting other people's body weight.

"And Solomon—you can't," Cal said. "If anybody can figure this out, you can. You have to know that."

Solomon's expression was torn; because Cal was right but he didn't want to say so, Cal thought, but it wasn't like it mattered. He was distracted, was the point, and Vincent was looking at him, and Juliet from one of them to the other.

So there was nobody to stop Cal from setting his palm to the column in front of him.

 

 

For a second, he didn't think it had done anything. And then the light swallowed his hand, crept up his arm—faster than it had Nikko's, Cal thought, though he couldn't really tell for sure. He had enough time to glance over his shoulder, to check and see that nothing had changed for Nikko, and that was when things started to get weird.

Solomon had yelled, when Cal had moved, and Juliet was lifting the camera around—smart—so that Maggie could see exactly how it all was happening, since she hadn't gotten the chance to record it happening to Nikko. And then—

Then they slowed down. Cal didn't know how else to say it. He noticed with Juliet first; something changed about the way her eyes moved, and he figured out after a moment that it was the speed, that that was what was making her blinks look strange and drugged. And a moment after that, the effect had spread to Solomon's voice—it plunged deep, Cal still able to catch the sound of his own name, and then it was just indecipherable noise, and then it stopped.

Everything had stopped. Juliet looked like a statue, frozen, and Vincent too, just reaching out to catch Solomon's elbow. Solomon had his mouth half-open, his brows drawn down into a frown. Still yelling at Cal, except that he wasn't making any noise at all.

Cal blinked, and that was what made him realize that he could still move. He looked at all of them again, and then at Nikko beyond them—except Nikko wasn't there. He wasn't frozen or moving, he was just gone.

Cal was going to have to find him, then. He stepped away from the column, wondering what Nikko would have done if they'd all frozen around him like this—tried to climb back down the cliff on his own? Or maybe there was a passageway out of here, and Cal just had to figure out where.

But he didn't get another step before he had to flinch and shield his face from a sudden flash. A lot like the one that had come from Nikko's eyes before, but this time it had come from the column. The column, which had started glowing a whole lot brighter, and somehow wasn't covered up anymore: there wasn't any rock blocking it out, it was just a floor-to-ceiling bar of light. And when it was lit up like that, it didn't have any curvature to it. It was just a tall rectangle. A—a widening rectangle, Cal thought, squinting at it. An opening, even.

A door. And if the door had showed up for Nikko, what would he have done with it but go through it?

Cal kept a hand out in front of him just in case, because if the column was still there he didn't want to walk into it. But it didn't seem to be: it was just light, all light, everywhere around him, so bright he had to close his eyes to keep going. After a couple more steps, he had to have passed the column even if it was still there. So he lowered his hand—and it landed on a handle.

 

 

It didn't feel like the sort of rock that had been in the cave. And it didn't feel like the column either; that had been warm to the touch, smooth like glass. This felt like—

It felt like an ordinary door handle, honestly. A metal bar, something you pushed to open doors in schools or office buildings. Cal ran his hand along it, just to see whether it kept feeling like that, and it did. As far as he could tell from how fiercely red-orange it was behind his eyelids, the light was still going out there. But maybe now there was something else to see.

He braced himself and peered out through his eyelashes—and for a second it was all still blinding, featureless white.

But then, all at once, it wasn't; as quick as that first flash, the light was gone.

Cal was standing in front of a door. And it was a real door this time, not just a big white space. A fancy door, frosted glass and chrome, and Cal's hand still resting on the bar of it—like an office building, but a really nice one, something out of a movie or in a big city.

Frosted glass. Cal had been to a lot of cities with Veritas, and he might have been able to recognize the street outside if he'd been able to see it. He could push the door open; but maybe it was there to show where he'd come from. Maybe it would just lead back out into the light.

So instead he turned around.

It _was_ an office building, and a really nice one, and he was standing in the lobby. Nobody else seemed to have noticed him—which was a little ridiculous, because there were a lot of people in here. A lot of people who looked busy; not in a bad way, not in the way that had made Cal swear to himself he was never going to end up in a normal office job if he could help it. Just in the way they moved, striding with purpose towards side hallways or nearby doors. But they—

They all had pretty pleasant faces, actually. In a building this nice, Cal would have expected a lot of pencil skirts and ties, a lot of chignons and briefcases. But the women mostly had ponytails, and the men had dark slacks but not suit jackets, sleeves rolled up. There was something about the details of their clothes, their faces, that was off—hard to focus on, indistinct. Like they were extras in the background, even when Cal was looking right at them.

"Okay," Cal murmured to himself. "This is weird."

He stepped out into the lobby, and they made space for him—looking at him where they hadn't before, and smiling, sometimes nodding or saying, "Hey."

Which was also weird, for strangers in a fancy office building.

There was a reception desk, and the receptionist was in slightly better focus than everybody else. She probably had at least a couple lines of dialogue, Cal caught himself thinking—and maybe it was true, so he moved up to the desk and waited for her to look up.

She was in the middle of something, but that didn't seem to matter. The papers in front of her were spread out neatly, and Cal could read upside-down; but somehow the words on them were featureless, nothing he could understand or remember once he stopped looking at them.

He jerked his eyes back up, but the receptionist apparently didn't have a problem with him trying to sneak a look at her work. She just smiled at him, bright and attentive, and said, "Welcome to Veritas. Can I help you?"

Cal blinked, and took another quick look around. "Uh—Veritas? Shouldn't you be a little more careful who you say that to? Dorna could be—"

The receptionist laughed warmly. "There is no Dorna," she said, and reached up to pat Cal on the back of the hand. "It's all taken care of. We have a formal arrangement with the government and with the United Nations. Veritas's mission is recognized as an international priority."

"O—kay," Cal said.

The receptionist grinned again, flicked a curl back over her shoulder, and added, "Shouldn't you be upstairs?"

"Upstairs," Cal repeated.

"Upstairs," the receptionist confirmed, and pointed behind her to a really shiny elevator.

"Yeah," Cal said slowly. "Yeah, I'll—I think I'll go upstairs. Thanks."

 

 

The elevator had numbers for lots of floors, but they weren't actually _buttons_ ; it was like they were just there to light up, marking its progress. Cal caught glimpses of other offices, as the elevator rose smoothly past them—and Veritas had always been larger than just Solomon's field team, had always had resources, but nothing like this. The need for some level of secrecy, security, meant they had to keep a relatively low profile, insofar as they could. But this was—this entire _building_ was Veritas, top to bottom.

When the elevator finally slowed, it was because it was running out of things to light up: the numbers only went to 50, and then at the very top there was a simple "V". 49 blazed up, and then 50—and then the V, and the elevator dinged and let Cal out.

He hadn't been sure what to expect. Something in keeping with the rest of the building, maybe; some kind of fantastical penthouse suite-slash-lab-slash-pool-full-of-money. But the elevator doors opened onto nothing less than a near-perfect replica of the New York office. The same pale greenish walls stretched out on either side of the elevator, dark wood and fluorescent lighting; shelves and file boxes, computer racks and scanners, microscopes—and some of that stuff was a little fuzzy around the edges, the same way the people downstairs had been. But the way the place felt, it was—it was the way it had always felt to Cal, when he walked in. That sense that the whole universe was right there, waiting to be discovered.

He might almost have thought that he'd gone the wrong way, that Nikko wasn't in here at all—that he'd walked into his own transcendent heaven. But there was somebody standing in the front hallway, poking through a box of files; and it wasn't Juliet, and it wasn't Maggie either.

"Haley," Cal said.

 

 

He'd never met her. He'd still been—in high school, he was pretty sure, when she'd died.

But he recognized her anyway, the dark curls, the open smile, same as in all the pictures he'd ever seen of her. She turned at the sound of his voice and said, "Cal," fond and bright like she knew him, and reached out to touch the back of his wrist.

So this: this was what Nikko wanted. The abstraction, downstairs, of Veritas huge and active and well-supported, full of good people smiling and busily doing their jobs; and yet, as illogical as it was, the New York office intact at the top, just the way it had looked the day Nikko had first seen it.

And Haley, alive. Alive and happy, and hard at work. Hard at work _here_ , Cal thought slowly—here with Solomon, where Nikko could see them both every day.

"I think Nikko's around here somewhere," Haley was saying, as she turned back to the box of files. "In one of the labs, probably, touching something he's not supposed to—you know how he is."

"Yeah," Cal said, before his throat could tighten up too much for it to get out. "Yeah, I'll—I'll go look."

"Just don't let him blow anything up," Haley said, throwing a wink at him over her shoulder; and Cal managed to get himself moving again before he could spend more than a couple seconds just staring at the back of her head.

Solomon _was_ in here, a few rooms down the hall. He looked up when Cal stuck his head in, and grinned—warm, no shadows in his eyes, fewer wrinkles around his mouth and across his forehead. And Vincent, standing by his desk, as calm as ever; but there was maybe something different about how he held himself, Cal thought. A little less precisely, his movements less measured. Like somebody who wasn't hiding anything—who didn't have anything to hide.

The next room down definitely hadn't been in the actual New York office: it was a library. An impossibly large one—the shelves were stretching out into the distance much further than they should have been, considering Solomon's office was next door and its back wall had been in basically the same place as always. There was a bank of computer monitors, too, and Juliet seemed to have something pulled up and scrolling on every single one of them.

Cal figured not getting in the way was the better part of valor.

Maggie wasn't in the huge and brightly-lit infirmary Nikko's vision had given her, but rather one room further over, in a suite full of signal displays and microscopes and other big gleaming machines. Cal was pretty sure Nikko hadn't had anything specific in mind for some of them: a couple were crisp, clear, things Nikko must've seen in Maggie's actual workspaces, but beyond that they were just ... big gleaming machines, with an air of complexity and science to them.

And that just left Cal. He found himself almost hesitating. Where exactly was he going to find himself in here? Where would Nikko have put him?

Cleaning toilets, probably. He snorted at the thought, shook his head and kept walking. And when he did get to the lab at the end of the hallway, that wasn't what he found at all.

 

 

He had a minute to just watch, because the door was open and it wasn't like he'd been stomping—he hadn't given them any reason to look up.

He didn't even really mean to keep standing there without saying anything. It wasn't _that_ weird. They were just sitting together at one of the lab tables, Nikko and the other Cal, working on something—some kind of puzzle, it looked like, scans of what might have been the surface of a broken artifact, needing to be pieced together. And Nikko wasn't punching the other Cal or—or anything, hadn't imagined him with a stupid expression or green hair. The weirdest thing about the other Cal was—

It was how much he was smiling.

Nikko said something, a little too low for Cal to catch it from the doorway. And the other Cal scoffed at it, whatever it was—but then he smiled at Nikko afterward. He smiled at Nikko even while he was shaking his head, taking a scanned page from where Nikko had put it and moving it to the other side of the table. And then he—he touched Nikko's wrist, the back of his hand, as he pointed to something on the page and then traced a jagged outline in the air above it.

Cal felt his face get hot, even though there was no good reason for it. _He_ wasn't doing this. He wasn't responsible for any of it. He wasn't sitting there like a dope with his hand all over Nikko's, still smiling, eyes going right back to Nikko's face—

He'd never have done that, in the real world.

He'd never have let himself.

And somehow he had to convince Nikko that this place, where he had everything he wanted—where Veritas had it easy, all the mysteries and adventure and none of the life-threatening danger, where they were all still a team, where his goddamn _mother_ hadn't died—wasn't real.

Great.

 

 

Nikko might have wanted Cal a little friendlier or whatever, but that didn't mean he wanted _two_ of Cal. So maybe that was a good place to start.

Cal cleared his throat, and watched Nikko and the other him both look over their shoulders at the same time. Nikko's face went pink, his mouth round and startled, and then Cal couldn't see him anymore because the other Cal had stepped in between them.

"What the hell," the other Cal said sharply. "Did I fall asleep on the table? Nikko, are you seeing this?"

"I'm real," Cal said quickly. "I swear I am. Nikko—"

The other Cal snorted. "What," he said, "like time travel? Somebody cloned me? Are you serious?"

"Hey, for all you know, somebody cloned _me_ ," Cal said, because jesus. Was he really this annoying?

"Oh, come on," said the other Cal. "I can't believe I'm even arguing with you—with _myself_ —about this. As if Nikko doesn't know which one of us is me—"

He stopped when Nikko touched his arm, turning and raising his eyebrows; his focus was immediately all on Nikko's face, intent.

"Yeah," Nikko said to him softly, without looking up. "I do."

The other Cal frowned for a split second, and then started to smile—not a real smile, but like he was about to say Nikko was kidding him, like he wanted Nikko to see how ridiculous all this was. He was opening his mouth, too.

And then all of a sudden he wasn't. He slowed instead, just like Juliet and Solomon and Vincent had outside. Slowed, and then stopped entirely, frozen.

"Man, that's creepy," Cal said without thinking.

Nikko snorted a little, not really sounding all that amused; and Cal looked at him. He was standing there with a hand curled around the back of his neck, his ears and the sides of his throat still a little red, and his shoulders were sort of downturned, collapsing in. Tired, Cal thought.

"You know," he heard himself say. "You—you know this isn't real."

He'd assumed—he didn't know what. That it would be like a dream for Nikko, maybe. That it would all feel real and reasonable to him, logical, until Cal could point out the inconsistencies or convince him to think it through.

But apparently it wasn't like that at all.

"I'm not stupid," Nikko said sharply, and didn't even give Cal a chance to explain that wasn't what he'd meant at all. "This is all in my head. I can't be six people at once. They're—you'd be able to tell, too, if you'd talked to them longer. They aren't themselves, they're me being them."

And he was talking about Solomon and Vincent, Maggie and Juliet, Haley—but Cal couldn't help remembering the extras in the lobby. Pleasant and vague, ponytails and no ties; because Nikko had probably gotten sick of ties at Brighton, wouldn't populate a world with people who loved their jobs and make them wear them—

And they'd all seen Cal and nodded, said, "Hey"—just like Nikko sometimes did.

But if Nikko knew it wasn't real, then—

"So what the hell are you still doing in here?" Cal said, and then his stomach dropped. "Wait, did you—is going back out the door not enough, or—"

That got Nikko to look at him, finally. He just looked for a long second; and then he tipped his chin up and said, "I haven't tried it."

"You haven't—"

"Why should I?" Nikko said with a shrug. His tone had gotten breezy, but there was still an edge to it—and this was the reason they always ended up fighting, Cal thought, clenching his teeth. Nikko always got it in his head that there was some kind of point he needed to make, when all Cal was trying to do was _talk_ to him—like it was more important to disagree with Cal than it was to make sense.

Maybe he should have come in here and told Nikko to stay put.

"I've got what I want," Nikko was saying, holding his hands out expressively to indicate the lab, the hallway and office beyond it. "That's the whole point of this place, right? I remember what you said. Utopia. All I have to do is think of something—anything—and it'll be here. Dorna's gone. Dad won't tell me not to do anything anymore. I can't get hurt—"

"Oh, because you tried _that_ , but not opening the door," Cal spat. What the hell had he done? Gone through the lab equipment until he found glass he could break—or had he just hit his head on something, winced and then realized there was no reason to?

"What does it matter?" Nikko said with a scoff. "I can do anything I want in here. There's no homework, Juliet never gets on my case—I can sit around reading magazines and eating candy all day long, and it doesn't matter—"

" _Yeah_ ," Cal said. "It _doesn't matter_ , Nikko, because it's not real!"

"I can have anything I want," Nikko said again; and he looked the same, expression infuriatingly defiant, a brat who wouldn't let go of his toys—

But his voice didn't sound right anymore. And—and something about his eyes, Cal thought, the way his brows were drawing down, something shaky just at the corners of his mouth.

"I can have everybody be happy," Nikko said, more quietly; and then he sucked in a breath and turned around, wiping hurriedly at his face like he thought Cal wouldn't notice. "I can have—there's nothing to worry about in here. There isn't any prophecy, or any Ring of Truth, or any end of the world."

Cal swallowed. That was—he hadn't—

"Nikko, hey—"

Nikko ducked away from Cal's hand, around the frozen other Cal like he was a shield. "What do you care, anyway?" he snapped. "What are you even doing in here? I'd have thought you'd be a little too busy throwing a party over me dropping into a coma or whatever—"

"Are you kidding me?" Cal said, and it was more strident than he'd meant it to be. Because that was what always happened when he was talking to Nikko, every goddamn time. Because that was what always happened when they tried to talk to each other and weren't about to die.

But if he didn't say it, it wouldn't get said; and he couldn't stand that.

"Am I—"

"Man, your dad is _not_ going to just leave you in here," Cal pushed on, because if he let Nikko interrupt him they were just going to keep going around in a circle. "You get all covered in weird light and pass out or something, and you think your dad—and we're talking about _Solomon Zond_ , for the record—is going to say, 'Well, huh. That's weird,' and leave it at that?"

Nikko shut his mouth. And then opened it again, but just to bite a little at his lip—

Cal hurriedly yanked his eyes back up, and tried to remember the point he'd been making. "And if he'd been hit on the head or something and did do that, you think we'd go along with it? Vincent wouldn't leave you like this, Maggie wouldn't—Juliet probably couldn't carry you out of the cave by herself, but that doesn't mean she wouldn't try. _I_ wouldn't. I'd—" and then Cal caught himself and cleared his throat, looking away. "I wouldn't. Okay?"

And Nikko surprised him again. Cal had thought he might laugh, or look confused—or maybe, if Cal was lucky, not react at all except to argue some more.

But he didn't do any of that. He stared at Cal for a long moment; and then he said, "Yeah," flatly and disappeared.

 

 

Which left Cal alone in the lab with his frozen other self. Creepy.

His other face was still caught mid-argument, about to tell Nikko to stop being stupid. "Yeah, you and me both," Cal murmured to it, and shook his head.

He took a quick look around the lab, just in case, but Nikko—

Nikko had pretty clearly wanted to be somewhere else.

And Cal wasn't exactly looking forward to fifty floors' worth of hide-and-go-seek, but he'd _meant_ it, no matter what Nikko thought. He wasn't leaving Nikko in here. He'd argue Nikko hoarse and then carry him back out the door, if he had to.

Nikko wasn't in the hallway, and neither was anyone else. Maggie, Juliet, Vincent and Solomon—they'd all vanished, at least as far as Cal could tell.

It got spooky pretty fast, going through the empty office, with all the equipment Nikko had imagined still there but nobody around to use it. Like the world already had ended, Cal thought, and not because of any disaster but just because there was nobody left in it except Cal.

But Nikko had to be around here somewhere.

"Seriously, Nikko, why do you always have to do everything the hard way?" Cal asked the wall, as he came back around toward the elevator; and then he realized there was someone he'd forgotten to look for.

"I think he gets it from me," Haley said with a wry little twist of her mouth, and then she shrugged at Cal, apologetic.

"Haley. I mean, Mrs—uh—"

"Haley's fine," she told him with a laugh, shaking her hair back over her shoulders; and then she reached out to put a hand on his arm, and said, "And if you're looking for Nikko, I think you might have better luck upstairs."

"Upstairs?" Cal said. "But there aren't any more floors."

"The elevator doesn't go any higher than this," Haley corrected. "That doesn't mean there aren't any more floors."

Cal sighed through his teeth, and resisted the urge to rub at his forehead. Nikko's brain had come up with this place. He shouldn't be surprised that it was confusing and frustrating and didn't make any sense.

Maybe it was stupid to keep pushing. He wasn't leaving without Nikko, but that didn't mean he had to charge around like a rat in a maze, especially not with the playing field this far from level. For all he knew, Nikko could see all of this—was watching him on a big-screen TV right now, eating dream popcorn and snickering—

"Cal."

Cal blinked and met Haley's eyes. She was looking at him with a funny soft expression, not quite smiling, but with the corners of her eyes all crinkled up.

And then she opened her mouth again and hesitated—shifted her weight, an awkward little shuffle. One that Cal had definitely seen somewhere before.

 _They're me being them_ , Cal remembered.

"I wouldn't be telling you this if Nikko didn't want me to," Haley said, quiet. "That's how it works in here. You know that." She stopped and squeezed his shoulder, and then added slowly, holding eye contact the whole time, "And if you're looking for Nikko, I think you might have better luck upstairs."

 

 

So Cal went upstairs.

He had to find the stairs first, obviously. And they weren't next to the elevator, because that would have been way too easy. He kept on going down the hallway, past a whole bunch more labs and banks of computers that weren't there in the real New York office, and further, further than the building should have let him go.

And at the very end, there was a door. At least twenty feet away from any of the others, which had all been spaced a lot more normally, and it had at least ten different kinds of latches and locks. On the _outside_.

"Not subtle, huh," Cal murmured, except—well, Nikko wasn't, was he? Nikko wasn't subtle, as a rule, and people's brains weren't either. Nikko's subconscious felt like this door was special, so it was visually set apart; and it felt like this door should stay closed, like Cal should know it was supposed to stay closed, so there were locks on the outside even though that was stupid and made no sense.

Cal eyed them. He could probably find something around here that could be used to break them or cut through them. But—

_I wouldn't be telling you this if Nikko didn't want me to._

It was silly to think that meant anything—that it had anything to do with Cal in particular. But Cal reached out anyway and put his hand on the door handle, just to test it.

And the second he did, every single one of the locks fell open.

"Well, here we go, then," Cal said, and went through.

 

 

There were stairs on the other side.

A lot of them, but that was okay. More relaxing than rockclimbing, after all. And they didn't increase on him or anything—get longer, or steeper, or flatten out into a ramp so he slid back down to the bottom. That had to be a good sign.

There wasn't another door at the top: just a window. Frosted, just like the door in the lobby had been, so Cal couldn't see through it. He eyed it for a second, but it seemed pretty normal. Single-hung, and unlatched. He slid the lower sash up, squinting and turning his face away just in case it was about to open onto the light from before; but it didn't. It opened onto a roof.

A roof that definitely didn't belong to the New York office. Everything around and below it was a little hazy, just like the equipment in the labs had been—but it was definitely green, trees here and there, paths and walkways, and a suggestion of other buildings in the distance beyond the trees. Spaced out, though, and stately; big, but only a couple floors, like old buildings were.

And there was somebody crouched down, all the way over at the far corner of it.

Cal glanced down. There was a bit of an angle to the roof, but nothing serious, and it was all sheets of weathered copper, grooves and shoulders fitted together with bolts at regular intervals. Perfectly good footing. Especially compared to ice cliffs in Antarctica.

Nikko could hear him coming—no help for that. But he didn't disappear again, and the roof didn't crack open under Cal's feet. That had to count for something.

Cal decided not plunging them right back into an argument was a good place to start. "Where's this?"

"Brighton," Nikko said, not looking up. He was staring out at the trees instead, seated, arms wrapped around his knees. "It's Brighton. Roof of my dorm building. I guess it could have been the house, but that was always—Dad was always—"

Not there, Cal thought. But at the house—wherever that was; and god, it was weird to think of Solomon sitting down to dinner in some New York suburb—he hadn't been in a place he was supposed to be. At Brighton, he hadn't been there and that made sense. Hurt less.

Nikko broke off and shook his head. "Came up here to think," he said instead. "It was the most myself I ever felt at Brighton, up here."

Cal turned that over for a second, and then gave in and sat down too. If Nikko wanted him further away—well, then the roof would move him further away, wouldn't it? And he hadn't minded the other Cal sitting next to him.

"Look," Nikko said, before Cal could so much as open his mouth. "I know I can't stay in here forever, all right? I get it. I just—it was just nice. To have—things." He cut a quick glance sideways at Cal and then away, and it was—he looked strange. Nervous?

It was warm out here. Not sunny, not enough detail to the sky for that, but mild. But not warm enough that Nikko's face should be going steadily red.

"Like—your mom?" Cal said, shooting wildly into the dark. Was Nikko _embarrassed_ about wanting his mom to not be dead? Because Cal hadn't intended to turn this into a fight, but that was just stupid—

"Like," Nikko said, a brief bewildered echo, and then his eyebrows went up and he blinked. "Are you serious? You followed me all the way up here to talk about my mom?"

"Uh."

"Oh, give me a break. You _saw_ us in the lab—"

Yeah, of course he had. And he hadn't really wanted to think about it, either: how he'd looked sitting with Nikko like that, so close their knees had probably been touching under the lab table; smiling, and brushing their hands together, and _looking_ at Nikko almost the whole time. Like Nikko needed to rub it in—

Cal felt himself go still.

He'd been thinking about it like the lab had said something about him. But it hadn't, had it?

_I wouldn't be telling you this if Nikko didn't want me to. That's how it works in here. You know that._

The lab hadn't been what _Cal_ wanted, somehow leaking through into his other self. It had been—

It had been what Nikko wanted.

Cal couldn't help jerking around to look at Nikko, who'd broken off and bitten his lip and was looking out at the trees again instead of back at Cal. And yeah, his face was definitely red.

"So you—want me to be nicer," Cal said slowly.

Nikko snorted. "What," he said, "did I really mess it up that much?"

"He was kind of a dick," Cal conceded.

"Yeah, well," Nikko said, lifting his hands to link them around the back of his neck. "You're kind of a dick."

"Hey," Cal said, automatic, and then his brain caught up with his mouth and he stopped short.

So what Nikko wanted from him, the same way Nikko wanted the team safe and Dorna gone, and maybe even the same way he wanted his _mother_ alive—what Nikko wanted from Cal wasn't for him to be nicer, or to shut up and go away. It was—

Well, he'd thought it himself just a minute ago, hadn't he? It was for Cal to sit next to Nikko in the lab, that close, and smile at him.

Cal felt his heart give a stupid hopeful thump.

"Anyway, it's not that I think—it's not that I'd ever—" Nikko was saying, clumsy and fumbling, getting redder with every word. "It was just nice to have it in here for a little while. To have you—"

He stopped and bit his lip again, like his mouth needed to be any pinker; Cal automatically dragged his eyes away, and then thought to himself with a deep slow shiver that maybe he didn't have to.

Nikko was sitting there thinking the only way he and Cal could ever happen—even in the smallest way, even just Cal's hand lingering on his in the lab—was in some kind of weird glowy coma dream. And it wasn't right, that he didn't know. It wasn't right that he didn't understand how incredibly wrong he was.

"Man," Cal heard himself say, "you don't need to be in here for that."

It happened perfectly—and maybe being in here did help, even with stuff like that. Cal set his hand on Nikko's elbow, slid it up the forearm and then over the back of Nikko's own hand where it was still curved around the side of Nikko's neck; and Nikko turned to look at him, startled, wide-eyed, and didn't even catch Cal in the chin with his elbow as it swung around. Which put the other side of his face well within reach of Cal's free hand, and then it was the easiest thing in the world to press him back into the angle of the roof and kiss him.

The few times Cal had let himself think about—about doing this, he'd figured it would be rushed. Over fast. Maybe because he'd mostly thought about using it to shut Nikko up during arguments; or maybe because it had been hard to imagine Nikko wanting to drag it out. It had been hard to imagine this happening unless it was Cal catching Nikko by surprise.

But Nikko's mouth only stayed slack under Cal's for a second. And then all at once he moved: his hand came up to clutch at Cal's shoulders, all of him turning to angle into Cal, his lips parting; he _bit_ a little, which made Cal startle, pulled a sharp sound out of his throat—that was, he—he hadn't thought—

Nikko broke away with a gasp, and for a moment didn't pull any further back than that. Just far enough to breathe, his eyes still closed, a blurry two inches from Cal's face.

And then he swallowed and cleared his throat and said, "Uh."

"Yeah," Cal said, easing away a little further, and then, "uh, sorry. I didn't mean to just—yeah."

"Sure," Nikko said, blinking his eyes open, "right," and then he seemed to realize how ridiculous they both sounded and he laughed.

Cal couldn't help laughing, too; and they glanced at each other sheepishly and then had to look away, snorting.

"So, listen," Cal said, once he could do it without chuckling hysterically. "I get it, okay? I do. There's all kinds of stuff you've been worrying about, and this was your chance to make it all go away. But you—you have to know we're here for you, man. I'm—I'll be there for you, if you want, in the real world. You don't have to sleep through it all in here."

Nikko had gone back to staring out at the trees; but Cal's hand was still curled around his, and he hadn't shaken it off. That had to be good, right?

And then he turned and looked at Cal, eyes wide and pale and perfect, face suddenly serious. "Yeah," he said, and the roof dissolved around them.

 

 

For a second it was all just light again, and then it wasn't: they were in the lobby.

It was empty, this time. No extras anymore, not even the receptionist. They were standing up, too, Cal noticed, even though they'd still been sitting down when the roof had vanished—but his hand was still around Nikko's.

"The door, huh?" Nikko said, staring across the lobby at it.

Cal shrugged. "That's how I got in."

"Okay," Nikko said.

Cal didn't rush him. Nikko could have just warped them in right next to the door, or even taken the whole place apart around them; so maybe the point was that he felt like he ought to walk across the lobby. Maybe the point was that he felt like he needed to choose to open that door and leave.

So they walked across the lobby together, and when Nikko paused in front of the door, Cal didn't say anything. Nikko blew out a breath and put his hand on the bar, and pushed; and then they both winced and squinted as the light spilled through and surrounded them.

Except this time it wasn't featureless.

"Uh, hey," Cal said, but Nikko was already turning away, walking off through the light to one side. "Hey, Nikko—"

"It's like you said," Nikko snapped, "it's not real."

But he stopped walking when Cal got a hand on his wrist, even if he still wouldn't look at Haley.

Cal snuck a glance at her. She didn't seem upset or anything, though she was close enough to have heard what Nikko said. She was just standing in the middle of the light, hands clasped, expression soft and understanding.

"It isn't her," Nikko said, more quietly. "It doesn't matter. I was just a kid, Cal, I didn't even really know her—"

"But it's her a little bit," Cal said. "Maybe just in the ways you remember, but so what? That stuff is real. It wasn't all of her, but it's not nothing."

And she wouldn't still have been standing there if Nikko didn't want her to, even just a little bit. But Cal decided not to mention that.

Nikko glanced at Haley, side-on, and then at Cal; and then he sucked in a breath and walked past Cal, one careful step at a time. "Hey, Mom," he said, very low.

Haley smiled and touched his cheek and said, "Hey, Nikko," and whatever else about her Nikko's mind might have been making up, Cal would have bet anything the voice was exactly right.

"I love you," Nikko said, and Haley leaned in and kissed his forehead—she was taller than he was, Cal noticed, and maybe she'd really been tall or maybe Nikko just remembered her that way.

"I love you, too, sweetheart," Haley told him, smiling again, and Nikko was still staring at her, Cal a step away watching, when the light swept over all three of them and Cal woke up.

 

 

He was expecting to see the cave again, the column of light and everything; but instead he blinked his eyes open and was met with a ceiling.

"Uh," he said.

"Five minutes early," Maggie said, leaning over him with a pen light and flashing it in each of his eyes twice; and then she smiled and said, "Welcome back, Cal."

"Is Nikko—"

"Yeah," Nikko said a little mushily, from somewhere off to the side, and Maggie hustled over to shine the light at him, too.

"What," Cal said, "no brain scans?"

"As best we've been able to determine," Maggie said, "the nanomachines from the cave are designed to dissolve harmlessly—"

"Whoa, hey, back up," Nikko said. "Nanomachines? What?"

"You've missed a few things," Maggie said dryly, crossing her arms. "What do you remember?"

Cal and Nikko glanced at each other. "The column," Nikko said, "the light under the rock. It sort of—crawled up my arm."

"That was the nanomachines," Maggie said. "The emission of visible light is apparently by design, to make them easy to perceive and monitor."

"So it wasn't a trap," Cal said.

"Apparently not," Maggie agreed.

"So, however-many-thousand-year-old tiny glowing robots ... crawled into our brains and made us dream?" Nikko said, looking simultaneously disgusted and thrilled.

"It might be better described as an advanced form of virtual reality," Maggie clarified. "Studies have been done that demonstrate the basic principles. Stimulating the brain electrically can make you hear music that isn't playing, see colors, feel as though someone's touching you—"

Cal felt himself go hot, and all at once couldn't look Nikko in the eye anymore.

"—and these nanomachines were able to target individual neurons and synapses with much greater precision than that," Maggie went on. "From your perspective, there wouldn't have been any difference between the signals being generated by the nanomachines and signals from your actual nerves." She spread her hands, shrugging. "In a certain sense, whatever happened in there did actually happen. Or it might as well have."

"But we're fine, right?" Nikko said.

Cal risked a glance—Nikko was looking away, studying the back of his own hand where the lines of light had been.

"As far as I can tell," Maggie said. "As I was about to say, the samples we managed to deactivate in the lab all dissolved into inert material immediately afterward. There shouldn't be any side effects. Which," she added, her voice turning wry, "meant Solomon had nothing to worry about except the part where you hadn't woken up yet—"

She was already reaching for the intercom, but Nikko held up a hand and said, "No, hey, I'll go find him."

"Sure," Maggie said with a smile, and then flapped her hands at them. "Go on, get out of my infirmary. I want to run some more tests on the samples we have left."

There were half a dozen more things Cal wanted to ask her—how long they'd been out, how exactly the rest of the team had managed to get them out of the cave, whether the nanomachines were really anywhere close to the same age as that pyramid they'd found in Antarctica.

But Nikko was already up and moving away, and still hadn't looked at Cal again, and somehow that didn't seem good.

So Cal nodded to Maggie and got up instead, and managed to make it out into the hallway before Nikko could slip away completely. "Hey," he said, and caught Nikko's elbow—and Nikko almost shook him free, but that he was trying to just meant Cal couldn't let him. "Hey, cut it out, man, I just want to talk to you—"

"Yeah, well, I don't want to talk to you!" Nikko snapped, and yanked himself out of Cal's grip so hard he overbalanced the other way and lurched into the wall.

"Not your lucky day, then," Cal said, deliberately cool.

He _wanted_ to yell right back—but he had the feeling he knew what would happen if he did. They'd argue a bunch, and somehow nothing that had anything to do with anything would get said, and Cal would go away still having no idea what the hell Nikko's problem was.

And that wasn't what he wanted.

Nikko still wasn't looking at him, but at least he'd stopped trying to move away. "Look, I get it," he said. "You were—you had to convince me to walk out of there. You had to wake me up. I even sort of appreciate it, okay, that you were willing to—" He stopped, but _make out with me_ ended up hanging in the air between them anyway. "I just don't really want to look you in the face for a couple days, all right? I'll get over it, I will. I'm not a kid. I can—I'll get over it."

Cal blinked at him. "Are you kidding me?"

Nikko's chin came up and his brows went down, defensiveness written in every line of his face. "What?"

"Man, and here I thought you had the picture," Cal said. "Did you or did you not tell me right to my face that I was a dick?"

Nikko opened his mouth—and then closed it again.

"Yeah," Cal said. "So what exactly gave you the impression I'd do that just to get you out? You heard Maggie. You weren't even dying or anything."

"You didn't know that when you went in," Nikko said—but absently, not a real argument, his expression brightening by slow degrees.

"Okay, well, you're not dying now," Cal said, low, and reached out to settle his hands on Nikko's hips, backing him up into the wall.

"No," Nikko agreed, and his eyes flicked over Cal's face once, twice, before he hooked an arm around Cal's neck and tugged him down.

"So reality's not so bad after all," Cal said, before Nikko could pull him in all the way.

And Nikko paused and looked at him intently, and then smiled just a little. "Yeah," he said. "Better than I'd imagined."

 

 


End file.
